Saturday, November 24, 2012

Everything you need to know about Obamacare

Apparently one of the biggest challenges we're going to face next year is the lack of accurate information about Obamacare. As you probably know, many of the most important provisions kick in on January 1, 2014. But most people have only heard about the individual mandate portion of the reforms.

Enroll America held focus groups in Philadelphia in mid-November, working exclusively with those who probably would qualify for benefits. Looking to understand how much public education will be needed, the researchers came back with a simple answer: a lot.

Participants’ hands shot up when researchers asked whether they had heard about a requirement to buy health insurance. But when asked about whether they had heard about any provisions that might make insurance more affordable, none of the 31 participants in the four groups answered yes.

Who knew that having the American public lied to for almost two years would leave them uninformed and confused? (< snark off >)

The truth is that there is tons of information out there to help people understand these reforms. And so I decided to compile some of where you can find it in order to help us spread the word. I'll be putting this post in a tab at the top of the page (titled simply: Obamacare) so that you can come back and find it when/if you need to.

First of all, bookmark the page for Enroll America. They are the non-profit group that is going to be working over the next year to get the word out.

One of the group's that has consistently put out quality information on the Affordable Care Act is the Kaiser Family Foundation. To get started on how much you do/don't know about the reforms, take their short quiz. They also have a pretty helpful video that gives a summary.

And they have a calculator to help people determine if they'll qualify for a subsidy.

That does it for now. But it should be enough to get you started. We have NO excuse for not knowing/sharing all the good stuff that is about to happen with the implementation of Obamacare. My plan is to link one of these resources per day on Facebook and Twitter. What's yours?

Thanks for the links. I'm passing them on to my sister who works at a grocery store. The day after the election most of her co-workers were lamenting that they would have to sign up for health insurance or get taxed. She called me for details and I gave her the information, but now she can arm herself.